Leather and silver pair cased verge watch with date indicator

Description — British Museum

Cases: Plain silver inner case with hinged bezel, split and glazed. On the back, the rotating cover for the winding hole is now missing. Silver pendant with loose ring. Leather-covered brass outer case with silver rims and silver piqué foliate decoration. The inside of the bezel is lined with red velvet. The piqué decoration in the form of a flower is inverted when the watch is viewed pendant-up. Dial & hand: Gilt-brass dial-plate with a decorative border around the outside. The underside of the plate retains its rough cast-finish except in the recesses for the dial wheel and the calendar wheel. Riveted outer silver ring engraved 1-31 anti-clockwise for the date, surrounding a rotating gilt-brass ring with a steel pointer to indicate the date. In the middle a riveted silver champlevé dial with raised Roman hours I-XII surrounding a quarter-circle with crossed arrow heads at the hours, lines for the quarters and dots at the half-hours. A small engraved rosette around the central hole. The steel hand is not original. : MOVEMENT Frame: Circular gilt-brass plates with four scroll-topped pierced Egyptian pillars. There is a potence-hole in the pillar-plate. Riveted potence and riveted counter-potence, with engraved decoration on the visible sides. Engraved decoration around the verge aperture. The pillar-plate is cut away to accommodate the hinge-block riveted on the dial back. There is a recess in the front for the hour and calendar wheels. Potence-plate signed. Mainspring & Set-up: Gilt-brass barrel with dovetailed cap and riveted steel hook. The base has a large convex and concave boss in the middle. The very thin cap, with only three dovetails for four recesses in the barrel wall, is not original. It is also too small to produce an upper flange. There is a single hole for gut-line attachment. Blued-steel mainspring. Tangent-screw set-up mounted on the potence-plate with two scrolled steel brackets, brass wheel, silver index engraved 1-8 and a screwed-on steel pointer. Fusee & Stop-Work: Gilt-brass fusee with an 11-turn groove for gut line. Standard stop-work, the spring curved towards the centre of the plate. Train: Three wheel train of gilt-brass wheels, the second and contrate wheels with three crossings and domed collets. Escapement & Balance Gilt-brass crown wheel with three crossings. The verge is broken and missing except for the top pallet which is still attached to a modern brass two-arm balance. Large screwed-on balance cock with pierced and engraved foliate decoration. The retaining screw is modern. The underside faces of the cock have been filed away, in the process removing a small steady-pin at the back. Motion work: A steel pinion of report mounted on the extended great wheel arbor drives a brass dial wheel. This wheel also has a steel pinion which drives the calendar wheel and pinion which in turn drives the calendar ring. : TRAIN COUNT Great wheel:60 Second wheel:50 pinion:5 Contrate wheel:45 pinion:5 Crown wheel:17 pinion:5 : Beat rate:15,827.586 per hour. : Motion-Work/Duration Pinion of report:6 Dial Wheel:31 Fusee:11 turns Calendar pinion:10 Calendar wheel:40 pinion 4 Calendar ring:62 : Duration = 25.5 hours approx.

Curator's comments — British Museum

Benjamin Wolverston was Freed March 1656 in Clockmakers' Company.